Passing clouds of inconsequential observations
Himself Who does not love making up words for Words With Friends? I know I do and today’s made up word is Hoya.
Apparently a flower named after the English gardner Thomas Hoy ( c.1750– c.1821). Or the Japanese name for a Sea Pineapple or opticals manufacturer. Or a singer in a south Korean band. But mostly it provides an excuse to not have to decide between Howlin’ Wolf or Jimi Hendrix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09j6vMdKi3E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3JsuWz4xWc
Who does not love listing to old records? I know I do and one of the best old records to listen to is Grounation.
Grounataion refers to the visit of Haile Selassie to Jamaica on April 21st 1966.
The three record set was made in the early 1970s by Count Ossie and The Mystic Revelations of Rastafari.
Count Ossie and his drumming group had first been recorded on the Folkes Brothers’ Oh Carolina (1959) which marked a first step along the Ska, RockSteady, Reggae path.
They included a version of Oh Carolina on Grounation
but it mostly comprises extended drumming and chants relating to the traditions of Rastafarianism and the teachings of Marcus Garvey.
The whole work stands as a perfect snapshot of the time and place alongside such iconic works as Trout Mask Replica and Escalator Over The Hill.
Who does not love a fish finger butty? I know I do after an arduous morning’s labour it is a perfect lunch.
Tradition dictates that the butty should be created with the stodgy pap that supermarkets sell as bread although, apart from the name, it bears little resemblance to actual bread. This should be thickly buttered and then smeared with tomato ketchup. The frozen fish fingers should be well grilled and sandwiched between the two slices of bread. As you tuck in to your treat the heat from the fish fingers melts the butter that dribbles down and congeals in your beard (should you happen to be of the bearded variety). Bosh indeed.
Who does not love learning something new? I know I do and these days we have so many opportunities to satiate our lust for learning. Alas for most children they do not get to learn very much as they go to school. Why this is still the case remains a mystery. There can be no logical reason for herding children together who have nothing in common other than the fact that they were born around the same time and live in the same area. It is a patently silly idea that has never worked and never will work. Successive governments keep coming up with some novel idea they claim will make it work – usually involving doing more of what is not working now… more testing, longer hours, shorter holidays etc.
Fortunately here in the UK one need not bother with such nonsense. The law requires that parents provide their children with a suitable education. This can be in any form that suits the child and the family. Attendance at school is not a legal requirement. The original thinking was that there would be an education service along the lines of the health service – available to all as and when required.
A good school, in short, is not a place of compulsory instruction, but a community of old and young, engaged in learning by co-operative experiment.
The Hadow Report (1931)
Such a radical idea was crippled by the machinations of the church, existing school system and the limitations of post war funding and was, alas, never realised in the 1944 Education Act and that “triumph for progressive reform” was a pallid interpretation of what was envisaged and possible.
One looks forward to the day when the nonsensical schooling system is disrupted and we can start to build something better.
Who does not love the Internet? I know I do apart from all the advertising that people keep sticking on it. Fortunately one can be spared the worse excesses with a range of Ad Blockers (link for extensions to Safari on a Mac but there are similar offerings for all browsers/systems). But now sites are detecting the Ad Blockers and asking you to turn them off.
If this is a site that you particularly want to support then disabling the Ad Blocker may be good choice but for most sites the same content can be found elsewhere and we do not particularly need it regurgitated from here and so can just leave.
It is not a one way thing as the delivery of the advertisements cost us money as they are consuming the bandwidth of our Internet connection. On mobile network this can start to add up. A recent survey found that at its worse to load 4 megabytes of actual content you had to download 15.4 megabytes of advertising at a cost of $0.32 rather than the $0.08 you planned to read.
Factor in that the sites usually have no control over what advertising is displayed as advertisers bid for your attention in instant auctions so leaving the whole system open to be exploited as a delivery mechanism for malware and there is little reason not to block the ads.
If asked to Disable your Ad Blocker – Just Say No!
Free Bonus D: In my catalogue D is also for De La Soul. Who doesn’t etc….